By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor
A joint venture of SSG Developments and New Boston Ventures intends to build a 208,000-square-foot complex that would be located on a 3.4-acre site between a residential neighborhood and an industrial area in Jamaica Plain, the [...]

A joint venture of SSG Developments and New Boston Ventures intends to build a 208,000-square-foot complex that would be located on a 3.4-acre site between a residential neighborhood and an industrial area in Jamaica Plain, the Boston Globe reports. The developers’ plans emerged in a project notification form filed with the Boston Redevelopment Authority this week. According to the agency’s website, the developers plan a five-building mixed-use complex consisting of 42 housing units, a 130,000-square-foot self-storage facility, 28,000 square feet of retail space and parking for 115 cars.

The residential component would include 36 market-rate units housed and six units designated as affordable and reserved for first-time buyers. The self-storage facility would consist of 1,233 storage units and a loading dock on the north side of the site. The project would rise on a parcel currently occupied by a vacant warehouse and a closed auto dealership.

In other real estate news, Banker & Tradesman notes that the Cambridge lab vacancy rate rose from 15.1 percent to 16.9 percent in the first half of 2011. According to a Colliers International report, 254,000 square feet of office space was converted into labs during that period. On the horizon is a 700,000-square-foot vacancy in 2014, when Vertex will leave Cambridge for its new 1.1 million-square-foot facility on Fan Pier in South Boston. And Colliers International executive vice president Joseph Plaherty told Banker & Tradesman that Sanofi-Aventis has yet to make a decision on the future of 600,000 square feet of office and lab space that accompanied its acquisition of Genzyme Corp. earlier this year.